AI And Apathy? American Airlines Service Suffers

A personal experience highlights the many service challenges that American Airlines continues to face – both technical and by staff.

Tech Glitch Plays Musical Chairs

It was a dark, and stormy night – a Thursday night consultants’ special – the last departure of the evening. My family, 120 other passengers, and a generous helping of American Airlines employees were making their way back to Pittsburgh from Charlotte.

We were first to board after First Class as Group One (Executive Platinum), except my digital boarding pass didn’t scan. The woman working the flight asked me to try another in my party of four, also failed. We will get back to that in a moment.

We waited while groups 1-4 boarded and passenger after passengers exited the line to fall in behind us at the counter, their seats had also not scanned properly. Some were digital (as most are now) but some were paper too. Others were scanned in and boarded the plane.

The concern grew that we might not be able to carry our two rollaboards on as the plane continued to fill even though that’s all we took for a weeklong trip for the four of us. Lost luggage was our chief concern with an inconvenient delay for collection either planeside or at baggage claim a distant second. Regardless, there should be no reason to lose access to bin space when the flight was purchased months ago with no changes, it was not full, and we were all booked together.

Not Ideal For Us, Others

As we waited, I reloaded my app which went from a confirmed row (12 ABC + D) and one on the other side to 10B/C and 31 D/E splitting my family up. The good news is that we were all going home tonight and that’s not lost on me. But the bad news was that my wife and I were split, each with a child. My son is in his terrible-twos and my wife remains a nervous flyer despite a million miles flown.

They also weren’t even reasonably close to each other. My daughter and I were six rows from the back of the very long Airbus A321, and my wife and son were about the same from the front of the plane.

Others in line had it arguably worse. One gentleman thought he would enjoy his short flight home from a first class seat – he was mistaken. He joined us in line for reassignment. Other suffered the same fate, shuffled around the cabin by a machine that doesn’t care about preferences, just delivering a solution to whatever problem it encountered.

It didn’t explain the problem it was solving to us, nor to the staff member working the flight.

Gate Attendant Could Not Care Less

Our gate attendant looked at us (and spoke to us) as though we didn’t have the right boarding pass pulled up. An assumption that we were inexperienced flyers, or too stupid to operate a digital boarding pass as she swiped us away to get out of line and wait at the counter.

In her limited defense, she was working this flight by herself, chaos had beset upon her, and she looked like it had been going like this all day.

She continued to board the flight, encounter flawed boarding passes, and only stopped giving the look of “how stupid are these people that can’t scan a boarding pass” to clients somewhere around the fourth incident in Group Two or Three.

She didn’t leave us until everyone had boarded, thankfully, but it was through Group 4 before she printed off new boarding passes for us and scanned us through. But when we raised the issue of wanting to sit together, “It’s two and two, ok?” and then waved us on.

In the 10 or so minutes we were stood there, and the 15 seconds it took her to reprint the boarding pass, she could have spared another 15 seconds to look at the monitor and move two of us.

My daughter and I left my son and wife in Main Cabin Extra and took the seats in the back. When the door closed, there were two seats to my left open (I was in 31D) and one seat to my daughter’s right open. There were five together for our family of four that only would have required physically looking at the screen and clicking twice and she couldn’t be bothered.

Is it a big deal? No, we all arrived alive, it was fine. But it was the quintessential flight experience that someone who flies once or twice a year tells you is why they hate traveling.

The gate agent probably had a long, hard day, full of fall thunderstorms, angry elites, and some travelers headed out for a once-a-year long weekend trip. But it was the smallest of effort required, the agent knew I was Executive Platinum because it’s all over the ticket and the digital version is black instead of blue – hard to miss. And even then, we asked her to seat us together. She just didn’t want to.

Isn’t Tech Supposed To Make This Better?

Where’s the AI that’s supposed to solve this sort of thing. We weren’t the only ones. What about the guy in first class, was that a last second upgrade or did he pay for the seat he was tossed from? Another next to us in the back, another two in front of my wife – it was a widespread problem. American Airlines customer service suffers because of its technical failures, but also due to the lack of intervention by some staff members. There was an opportunity to fix all of this, and it may have taken more time, but it could have been corrected by a person.

The computer system is rigid enough to never split up a family to offer an upgrade (I’d sit in the back with the kids and give an upgrade to my wife if there was only one) but whatever it was solving for, it just pissed off a ton of people and it seems needlessly so.

Where’s the AI that helps make more tactful solutions? If the airlines feel like they can use AI to squeeze more money out of the same seat, they are bragging on earnings calls with investors (or sheepishly denying it to Congress, depending on the week.)

But look at our situation, for example, are we the only party of four that needed to be split up for whatever reason? Was there not another party of four on the plane? One would have to assume that if there was, they’d not split an elite member (don’t they know who I am?) But assuming that it must be us who is moved from our original seats, why wouldn’t the system try to find us another set of four seats together?

Isn’t that the lowest possible hanging fruit especially when they were open together? One would think that if multiple would have to be moved around the plane, then it would be even easier to find opportunities to put us together or at least closer.

At the absolute minimum, digital boarding passes should be dynamic enough to update the seat and alert the guest to the change. And if the traveler hasn’t noticed the change or push notification will still scan the traveler through but make a noise to say “your seat’s changed to X” instead of “your boarding pass doesn’t work, get out of line and I’ll fill half the plane before I can do anything to help.

AI, or AGI (Artificial Generative Intelligence) should be doing enough heavy lifting to make smarter decisions and take the weight off of a disinterested gate agent. That would at least allow the airline a service recovery rather than compounding the issue.

Conclusion

Whether it’s a technology issue from legacy systems, an apathy issue from an overworked and unsupported staff member, or a lack of an AI focus to solve extremely solvable problems, American just can’t seem to get it together. When the airline swings and misses, it’s a wide margin.

Our issue didn’t change our life, it didn’t even change our arrival time. More than being annoyed with the seat switch, I’m simply confounded by myriad ways that American refuses to solve the easiest of problems and goes out of its way to make a problem harder than it needs to be disproportionately affecting the guests it least wants to disappoint.

What do you think?